1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to methods for predicting proactive maintenance and, more particularly, to methods and systems for predicting proactive maintenance of the Public Switched Telephone Network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Residential and business telephone customers are connected to telephone systems by copper cables, copper wires, and even fiber optic cables. The copper cables and wires, for example, are the familiar one or more telephone lines running throughout nearly every home in the United States. Fiber optic cables are increasingly used to carry voice and data between metropolitan areas and between business locations. Because copper cable, copper wire, and even fiber optic cable connects nearly all homes and businesses to the telephone system, the Public Switched Telephone Network is a massive network composed of billions of copper cables, copper wires, and fiber optic cables. These cables and wires must be maintained to provide superior telephone service to the customer.
Copper cable and wire, however, are known to deteriorate and to degrade service. Copper cable and wire suffers from exposure to ozone, summer heat, winter cold, and water. Copper cables and wires are often strung from telephone poles, buried underground, and installed within the walls and floors of buildings. This environmental exposure is acute in older buildings and neighborhoods where the telephone lines were installed twenty-five (25) to fifty (50) years ago. Copper cables and wires, in fact, are known to deteriorate at approximately twelve percent (12%) to fifteen percent (15%) per year. The public telephone system, with its billions of copper telephone lines, requires a structured, proactive maintenance plan to ensure telephone customers receive the highest quality telephone service available in the market.
Fiber optic cable must also be maintained. Although the fiber optic cables are often routed within a protective conduit, this conduit may crack with seasonal freezing and thawing. These cracks allow water to seep into the conduit, and water affects the transmissibility of light along the fiber optic cable. Older fiber optic cable may have higher attenuation or even cable breaks. Even something as small as a kink in the fiber may cause unacceptably high optical losses. Thus, the public telephone system's increasing use of fiber optic cables requires a structured, proactive maintenance plan to ensure the highest quality telephone service.
Telephone service providers, however, are challenged when monitoring and tracking proactive maintenance procedures. Currently proactive maintenance is assigned, dispatched, and tracked in a manual environment. Management relies upon individual experience to determine when, and where, proactive maintenance is performed. Management recommends proactive maintenance, and management's recommendation funnels down to supervisors. Supervisors manually write work orders describing the proactive maintenance procedures. These work orders are then assigned to field technicians. The field technician performs the proactive maintenance and then informs the supervisor. The supervisor completes a ticket describing the completed work order, and the ticket funnels back up to management. This manual process is slower than desired, and management would prefer a rapid response to customer requests.
Individual experience and style also influence proactive maintenance efforts. Some managers strongly believe in proactive maintenance. Other managers are less familiar with proactive maintenance. Telephone customers, as a result, often have differing experiences in quality and service. Some managers know immediately what copper cables and wires are operational and ready for customer use. Other managers have a backlog of repairs and require more time to learn what lines are functioning. This varied management style reduces the ability of telephone companies to execute a unified, customer service plan.
The manual environment also does not adequately prioritize proactive maintenance. A manager may often have a backlog of proactive maintenance work order. This backlog may be assigned without a focus on the core importance of customer service. A technician, for example, may be assigned to paint a graffiti-covered crossconnect box, even though some customers are without telephone service. The manual environment too easily allows technician efforts to be mistakenly assigned to lower-priority repair work.
The manual environment also hampers bulk repair efforts. Because the manual environment does not collect and track repair work, managers and technicians have little knowledge of other repair efforts. One technician may be dispatched to a location to repair a single copper cable, and the next day another technician may be dispatched to the same location to repair another copper cable. A single technician, however, could have repaired both copper cables in a single assignment. Bulk repair is especially important when we remember there may be thousands of copper cables branching from the crossconnect boxes. The manual environment hinders managers from assigning and tracking bulk copper cable repairs to avoid unnecessary labor costs.
The manual environment also inadequately measures technician proficiency. Although some technicians can repair many copper cables in a few hours, other technicians may not be as efficient and may require more time. The manual environment simply counts the number of work orders a technician completed. The manual environment cannot monitor what really matters to internal customers; that is, the actual number of copper cables repaired by the technician. The manual environment, then, cannot monitor technician efficiency and cannot objectively measure technician performance. The manual environment fails to objectively reward technicians for their actual efforts.
There is, accordingly, a need in the art for methods and systems for predicting proactive maintenance of the Public Switched Telephone Network. These methods and systems will preferably monitor and track proactive maintenance procedures, reduce the influence of erratic management styles and beliefs, prioritize and assign bulk proactive maintenance procedures, and objectively measure technician proficiency.